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More Than A Game: Baseball And Southern Textile Communities 1880-1935, Aaron Perch

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

While labor unrest itself is no stranger to American history, the strikes across the Piedmont textile industry in 1934 present a curious case. Throughout the conflict, a sizeable portion of the workers remained loyal to their companies and those who protested returned to the factories within a short period, often to the same management and conditions. Historians Daniel Singal and Trent Watts – in attempting to explain the workers’ willingness to return to work – have offered that the textile industry deliberately recreated the South’s traditional master-slave labor relationship. They suggest that mill management’s paternalistic efforts and persistent attempts to …